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Genadinik
Asked: 2011-03-24 09:29:08 +0800 CST

Finding where something is installed on Ubuntu

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I am trying to find where someone has installed a software package, and I can not. Is there a good way of finding that other than running a grep on the entire file system?

I am running Ubuntu and looking for an installation of a triple-store database called Virtuoso.

Thanks, Alex

ubuntu paths

5 Answers

  1. whereis Virtuoso

    Or, if the binary is called something else:

    whereis name-of-binary

    Or, if the software isnt located in the usual places (/bin, /sbin, /usr/bin etc)

    which name-of-binary
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  2. Was it installed using apt or dpkg? If so you can use dpkg -l |grep <name> to find the packages and dpkg -L <package name> to find where it installed the files.

    If it was not installed using the package management system, look at /opt and /usr/local first, and if it fails, use find / -iname <what you are searching> to search the whole filesystem.

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  3. If you installed with apt or dkpg 

    dpkg -L virtuoso

    will show you the location of all the files installed.

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  4. Don't forget the locate(1) command. If this is set up, updatedb runs nightly on your machine and creates an index of all files. Then for example

    $ locate myprogram

    will give you every file which contains myprogram (in the filename or path) on the system.

    If you know the exact name of the binary, you can use a regexp match to find it, for example:

    $ locate --regexp="myprogram$"

    will list all files which end in myprogram on your system.

    Two caveats:

    1. Many systems ship with updatedb turned off by default.
    2. The index is generally rebuilt once a day, so it will always be somewhat out-of-date.

    locate can be a good way to get a sense of where on the system a particular file might be, before you drill down to looking for the package.

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  5. Best Answer

    All the other answers given handle package installations. Without root level access there are few places a user can install software:

    • ~ (Their home directory)
    • /tmp (The temporary directory, package will likely disappear on next reboot.)
    • /var/tmp (Alternate temp directory. More likely to survive a reboot.)
    • /var/lock (Publicly writeable.)
    • Any other directories which they can write (none on a standard configuration).

    Normal places to install packages not using the package manager include:

    • /usr/local
    • /var/local (variable components)
    • /opt

    Commands to find writable directories (for user somebody in group users). 

    sudo find / -type d -perm -02
sudo find / -type d -perm -020 -group users
sudo find / -type d -perm -0200 -user somebody

    The user may belong to multiple groups. Each group will need to be checked.

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